1. Field of Invention
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present invention relate to a spliced-on connector system and a method, a splicer, and a connector holder for producing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A common way of terminating a cable for fiber to the premises (FTTP) applications is to splice a fiber optic pigtail onto a drop cable. In order to do this, some type of fiber management tray and procedure must be incorporated into the Optical Network Terminal (ONT). The fiber management process can require some skill to properly measure lengths and route the lengths inside the ONT. The measuring/routing process adds time and cost to the installation process.
Additionally, splicing on a pigtail is a different process from terminating either copper or coaxial cables. With both of these cables, the connector is placed at the end of the cable.
Another way of terminating cables at the customer premises includes using mechanical splices or field-installable connectors. However, mechanical splices and field installable connectors have not been proven to be reliable for long periods of time because of environmental changes. They also introduce back reflections which significantly affect the output of analog video systems and very high data rate digital video systems.
An alternative method is to use pre-terminated cables, but this method is very expensive.
Splicing on a connector is possible, but requires a specially designed connector and piece of equipment which is not very common in typical FTTP applications. In particular, fiber optic fusion splicers in wide commercial deployment have not had the functionality to terminate an optical fiber with a spliced-on fiber optic connector. More specifically, fiber optic fusion splicers have been unable to splice on a fiber optic connector that incorporates the splice point within the body of the fiber optic connector. As a result, an installer who wished to connect FTTP service at the ONT by cutting the feeder fiber optic cable to length and directly terminating the feeder fiber optic cable with a splice-on fiber optic connector was unable to do so.
A fiber optic fusion splicer specifically configured to use a specially designed fiber optic connector that incorporates the splice point in the body of the connector has been proposed. However, this forces an installer to buy new fusion splicing equipment. Additionally, this technical approach requires an installer to buy a connector that is specifically designed for one method of termination—splicing the connector onto the optical fiber cable using a specially configured splicer. Thus, an installer is unable to use industry standard connectors and industry standard fiber optic fusion splicers.